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■ Who we are
CI-CD Centre for Inter-cultural Development
from
cultural orientation to inter-cultural competence
CI-CD
Specialist Services for Doing Business in
Individual
Coaching or Group Workshops on the intercultural communication skills needed for
achieving successful business or managerial outcomes. Training can focus on
particular countries and regions. Full data evaluation reports of all our training
workshops are available.
Our approach
Much
‘cross-cultural’ training for executives and managers preparing for marketing,
negotiating trade agreements or managing JV partnerships between different
countries of Europe offers awareness, with tips about ‘body language’ and
‘business etiquette’, based on abstract generalisations about cultures drawn loosely
from anthropology and social psychology. But for CI-CD, that is only our starting point.
We move on from ‘awareness’ and ‘etiquette’ for starting a meeting, to provide a competencies approach – what to do and say differently – throughout the duration of a meeting: ie, how to ‘read
between the lines’ when cross-cultural uncertainties arise at any stage. We show through analysis of authentic
examples of intercultural business exchanges how misunderstandings occur, even
when all parties are speaking English fluently. We give practice in a
repertoire of new communication
strategies and skills for identifying and repairing damaging misperceptions of meaning and
intentions between people of different cultural background. These practical
skills are distilled from the latest authoritative research in the most
relevant field: applied socio-linguistics.
Put across in non-academic, practical terms, these skills are what busy
managers, under pressure to make things happen NOW, tell us they find most
useful for handling cultural diversity in international work situations.
We observe
meetings to analyse how unwitting cross-cultural barriers may be holding up
progress – and to suggest alternative intercultural strategies for better
outcomes. (This is an informal way of learning increasingly favoured by many
senior corporate executives.)
Clients EDS; Amnesty
International; Avery Dennison; WWF; EDS; Hawksmere
Ltd; British Council.
For Shepell/FGI (Canada-based specialists in
expatriate support, operating in 100 countries), we have provided intensive
preparation (involving partner/children, as appropriate) for work within or
between
Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy,
Luxembourg, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, Turkey, UK - and USA.
For United
Kingdom Trade and Investment (UKTI) we have supplied
§
training workshops for all
London-based International Trade Advisers;
§
training courses for UKTI client
companies preparing marketing and negotiating skills for
à see sample Outline of CI-CD workshop for
UKTI: ‘Preparing for doing business in Poland’
à see sample Full data Evaluation report:
UKTI course on Doing Business in Germany
§
5 books on ‘Cultural Sensitivity and
Intercultural Communication Skills for Trading/Investing Success’ in
Contact us
for copies of contents pages and preface of CI-CD Handbook for UKTI: Doing Business in Poland
Our
emphasis is on skills required for intercultural
§
motivating staff for co-ordinated
‘joined-up’ managing of team projects/operations
§
team-building
and periodic team process reviews
§
conducting team/departmental
meetings
§
defusing internal cultural tensions,
and group problem-solving.
Clients: CSC; EDS;
Nortel; Telstra; Bank of America; Merck; Honeywell; 3M; Avery Dennison; Lucent;
Amnesty International, WWF, VSO; British Council.
Specific strategies and skills for international virtual
team-working and team managing.
We created the
world’s only documentary video training materials that address the conditions
for successfully working and communicating virtually across cultures.
(Filmed with BP, Hewlett Packard, Telstra – see DVDs/videos.)
We create
in-house training materials at international broadcast standard.
Clients BBC TV; SBS Channel; The Employment
Service; Department of Health; Bank of America; BT; HCL; Infosys; European
Commission; Universities of Wales, Leeds, Salford.
Our resources
Our DVD/Video Materials. Inputs and
interactive analysis are built around our unique library of documentary video evidence, made for and broadcast by
BBC TV and SBS Channel in
On this theme,
credibility is all: our videos feature only real people in authentic
negotiations and project management meetings - not over-simplified, stereotypical dramatised scenes with actors. From
interactive analysis of such case-studies, managers and executives can see for
themselves how subtle and damaging misunderstandings occur.